Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Separating leaders and top performers from the rest

Emotional intelligence (or simply EI) is all about a person’s ability to:

Understand emotions

Balance emotions with logic and reason

Use emotions to enhance their thinking and solve problems.

You may have heard people referring to this as an individual’s emotional quotient (or EQ).

How can I spot a person with high EI?

Someone with a high level of emotional intelligence doesn’t usually stand out from the crowd too obviously. However, if you observe carefully, there are some key signs that give these individuals away. For example, a person with high EI will generally:

Manage their own emotions more effectively than other people

Easily achieve goals that revolve around the emotions of others

Thrive in both team and 1-on-1 scenarios

Flourish when given leadership opportunities.

Why should I care about emotional intelligence?

As a hiring manager, recruiter or business owner, it’s important for you to know that the people you’re hiring are emotionally capable. You don’t want to rely on someone who is a slave to their emotions, but – at the same time – nobody wants to work with a robot.

Testing the emotional intelligence of your candidates allows you to make an informed decision. You can confidently offer the position to someone who understands empathy but won’t collapse as soon as the pressure gets switched on.

What are benefits of having emotionally intelligent employees?

For starters, they’re typically nicer people to work with! But from a business perspective, people with high EI are also smarter HR investments. This is because they tend to be:

More productive

More stable

Better at communicating (both internally and externally)

Better at solving problems

Easier to work with.

It’s not difficult to see how a person with these traits is more likely to have a positive influence on any workplace.

Measures

Emotional intelligence

Predicts

Leadership, interpersonal communication, performance

Predicts

Leadership, interpersonal communication, performance

Questions

141 questions

Time

40 mins (un-timed)

Case Study

A major government-owned corporation used the MSCEIT to hire people with better interpersonal and communication skills

When should I assess for emotional intelligence?

When recruiting new employees

We recommend testing all shortlisted candidates, especially if the role involves:

Communicating regularly with colleagues

Managing other staff members

Dealing with customers

Liaising with clients

Working in a team setting.

When developing your current employees

Do you need to identify and develop your future leaders?

Or improve the capabilities of your current leaders, salespeople or customer-facing staff?

Assess your people to understand where their strengths lie, and which areas could be further developed, to help them become better leaders, communicators and team members.

Yes, this applies to your organisation!

Emotional intelligence is important in every industry and across every field. Whether your company is a small band of digital marketers or a nation-wide network of construction workers, hiring people with high emotional intelligence will benefit your business.

Using emotional intelligence tests when hiring and promoting will lead to more effective leadership and management, greater productivity and higher customer and client satisfaction.

And those are things that every organisation wants, right?

Revelian’s EI assessment

Overview

The Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) breaks EI down into four competencies. These factors include a person’s ability to:

Perceive Emotions: Recognise their own and others’ emotions

Facilitate thought: Generate and use emotions as problem-solving tools

Understand emotions: Understand emotions and how they can change

Manage emotions: Manage their own and others’ emotions.

Questions

The assessment uses a variety of situational questions – including visual and multiple-choice questions – to determine how competent a person is likely to be in each key area. For example, one question might ask a candidate to rank the importance of displaying emotions like sadness, anger and joy when delivering feedback to a colleague. Another question might show a person’s face and ask the candidate to identify the emotions being expressed.

Results and reporting

When your applicants or employees complete the test, both you and they will instantly receive a report showing how they’ve scored against each of the factors and, when recruiting, how each candidate compares to the group as a whole.